


Being Needed

by CherryFlight



Series: SWTOR: The Reflections Legacy [5]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Prequel, Sort of since it's after Korriban for Oberon but Natirru hasn't started Hutta yet, mentions of child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:21:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22927879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CherryFlight/pseuds/CherryFlight
Summary: Forced to return to Imperial space after his previous employer's death, Natirru has been promised assistance in getting into Imperial Intelligence in return for erasing a secret for a Sith.  That secret is about to become a bigger part of his life than he imagined
Relationships: Male Imperial Agent & Male Sith Warrior
Series: SWTOR: The Reflections Legacy [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1643305
Comments: 7
Kudos: 5





	Being Needed

The archives were dark, save the screen of Natirru’s datapad, lit with a document of a procedure carried out in the medical wing of this station. A natural childbirth of a healthy male Twi'lek-human hybrid (presenting entirely Twi'lek, it noted, except certain DNA markers), to a female Sith Lord named Jennal Malo.

This archival disc should have vanished twenty years ago, Natirru thought, fingers tightening on the edge of the datapad, but whoever Jennal had hired then was sloppy, and had only erased data on a handful of terminals and then gone on to forge adoption papers, leaving this behind. And this is why he was here. _This_ is what she had called him back for, after five years of quietly spying in Republic space. By now, everyone in his life there, nominally fake as it was, had probably assumed him dead as planned. Everyone but Abric. He’d left him a note to apologize. He still wasn’t sure which was the worse hurt. What kind of sick irony was it, that he had to betray the husband he loved to cover for Jennal’s betrayal of the one she didn’t?

Come to think of it, the Sith had a knack for tearing him from his passions. He had begun his education thinking to be a doctor, and joined the Imperial military as a combat medic when he learned they were in need. He built his body against his genetic high metabolism for strength, to carry the wounded from combat or free them from being pinned by overturned vehicles or structures. All his credits went to extra food, to keep his body from consuming the muscle he needed. He became practiced at cooking through this and shared food for morale’s sake. And then a wealthy Sith brat had noticed him, and thought his attention to detail and friendly demeanor would be excellently used in his service as his personal spy. The pay was good, and at first it seemed as if it would be for the best, but now?

Now the only person he felt he could truly trust was half a galaxy away and behind a burned bridge. His throat tightened in anger.

And then it simply closed.

Natirru fought desperately to draw breath, both hands instinctively clutching his throat though he knew he would find no physical obstruction. Had Jennal doubted him? Had she come back to kill him to prevent him from betraying her? He turned to try to plead with the Sith he hadn’t seen or heard enter and the fingertips barely visible in the edge of the datapad’s light slackened. His throat eased, and Natirru coughed and gasped for air, trying urgently to speak. Then he felt pressure elsewhere on his throat. His hand flew to the obstructed pulse point in shocked understanding, and then what little he could see faded into dizzy nothing.

When he came to, he was laying on his back, staring up into the darkness, with the datapad’s blue glow at the edge of his peripheral vision. Someone else breathed nearby in the silence. He wasn’t sore, so he hadn’t been picked up and dropped, just pushed aside. Furthermore, the Sith was still there. Curious.

“You haven’t lost much time, agent,” said a smooth voice. Too masculine and too young to be Jennal or her husband. It carried a crooning lilt, almost playful, but to Natirru’s trained ear - to a spy who had learned how to act - was put on. Too regular. Hiding something. “If you had, I doubt you would have woken up at all. Playing with blood flow to the brain is a delicate matter.”

“I know how it works, my lord,” Natirru said slowly, carefully pushing himself up to sit as the Sith forced a chuckle. The figure hunched over the datapad had the unmistakable silhouette of a Twi'lek - hair could not quite mimic the shape of their lekku, after all - his thin body hunched up in a ball, covered in gleaming dark armor. What a vulnerable posture for a Sith, but not an unsurprising one for a young man seeing proof he’d been lied to his entire life.

“I apologize for the initial choking, agent, but you had to turn around. That’s a variant on the Force choke most Sith don’t see the need to teach. I still need a direct line of sight until I’ve mastered it.” He looked up from the datapad, up at the ceiling. “Loss of consciousness is quicker that way, and that’s all I needed from you, a momentary lapse to get this out of your hands.” He then turned his head towards him, and even in the wan glow of the datapad, Natirru could see a haunted hollow wariness in his eyes, like he’d seen in soldiers who had been in active combat for too long. Their color was bright blue, noted to be his mother’s genetic color, though he had never seen the gold of corruption lift. He was also sure the young Sith was thinking the same thing.

“You are the young lord Oberon Malo,” Natirru said. He reached out to comfort him, because he had the look of someone trying to disappear into himself. But Oberon flinched and he withdrew his hand, a sick feeling forming in his gut. Oberon paused awkwardly, then carried on as if nothing had happened.

“I am. And she _is_ my real mother after all, after all this time.” His voice was pain trying to masquerade as an undercurrent of cold fury. The feeling of unease grew worse. And then the smooth lilting was back, too quickly. “You were here to delete this, weren’t you? I’ll do it. I wasn’t here to stop you. I only had to see it for myself before you did.”

Natirru only said, “Yes, my lord,” but he had noticed the word choice. _Had to see_ , not _wanted to see_.

“I won’t share it,” Oberon continued. “Not if you wouldn’t.”

“No, my lord,” Natirru replied, watching the young man’s body language carefully as he deleted all the relevant files, deliberately and one by one. He never uncurled from the half-seat on the floor, and seemed to be hoping it came off as carefree instead of vulnerable, without realizing Natirru already knew. His fingers shook, visible in the dramatic silhouette they cast against the glowing screen.

When it was done, he stood, and only when he was on his feet did Natirru also rise. Oberon seemed to approve of this, giving a subtle nod of his head in the dark as he detached the datapad from the archive and handed it over. “Let’s go, agent, the window for your scheduling trick won’t leave the door unguarded forever.”

He knew Jennal hadn’t sent Oberon. She couldn’t have. She wouldn’t, having lied to even him about his adoption. He tried to think of when he had seen the man - he had to keep himself from thinking of him as a _boy_ , in all the pain and vulnerability he tried to pass off as other things. Things a Sith _should_ feel.

But before he could try to pinpoint where he had missed him, he heard his foot drag over the threshold as he led him into the blinding light of the station. He watched him walk ahead of him for a time before speaking.

“My lord, how long have you been without the use of your right foot?”

Oberon stopped cold, and looked at him over his shoulder in a glare that was more suspicion than outrage. “What gave you that idea, agent?”

Natirru kept his voice level, gentle, professional. A doctor and his patient; no confrontation, no judgment. “Your foot didn’t adjust to the archive door’s threshold when you stepped over it - I heard you drag it, and it drew my attention to your gait. Normally, when one walks, the arms swing opposite the legs, for balance. Your left arm, in fact, does, and its fingers are curled at rest. Your _right_ arm swings in a tighter arc, and you hold its fingers outstretched - you are using the Force to manipulate your own foot.” He gestured towards each side of his body as appropriate, but with an upturned, open hand, rather than pointing.

“My mother didn’t say anything?” Oberon asked, half-turning - on his good foot, Natirru noticed. He also noticed a gleam in his eyes - hope.

“No. I wasn’t expecting it until I saw it. How did I not hear you enter the archives?”

“You were distracted. Er…” He shifted, slightly embarrassed. “…I also Force levitated myself inside.”

Natirru couldn’t help but smile. It was a genuine sentence in all this posturing. The smile vanished as the realization dawned that the posturing was more than a typical young Sith showing off his new station. All the little clues that churned sickly inside him… No, this was a clinging to power after a life of helplessness, he was sure. When his smile vanished, so did the flicker of hope in Oberon’s eyes, replaced with doubt.

“What’s wrong?”

He wanted to ask _What was the cause?_ , but he was sure he would only scare him away. “Do you still have sensation in that foot?”

“Yes. Keeping my balance would be much harder otherwise.”

“Then- If you still have feeling, and - I _assume_ blood flow must be fine because it’s still attached - all you need is a minor implant to restore proper communication in your brain. The equipment is here in this station, I can falsify the records so we have a cooperative droid or two, and I have combat-grade medpacs to assist your recovery, if you prepare for the crash when the stimulants wear off.”

Oberon blinked, staring at him, searching for a lie. Suspicious of being cared for. Not uncommon, he had to remind himself, being in the Empire again. But things that were normal were not necessarily _right_. With a quiet breath, Natirru relaxed the mental barriers built up by the joint encouragement of Csillan education and having things to hide from a Sith, and let him see his true intentions. The young man’s eyes widened as he realized what he’d done.

“Why?” he finally asked.

“Because I am a medic first and foremost, and I see a young man with a treatable injury.”

Oberon searched still, but wouldn’t find deception that didn’t exist. His shoulders had begun to shake. Natirru expected tears, but there were none. There was, however, a small break in his voice, and a shivering vulnerability to replace the practiced smoothness. Natirru guessed nobody had ever treated him like this, and with no idea what to do, he fell back on truth. He had seen it often - but usually in lifelong badly-treated slaves. “You…won’t tell them, will you? I never let them know what they did to me.”

And there were his suspicions confirmed. It was all he could do to avoid inviting him to stay with him until preparations for his life as a new apprentice Sith were ready. Not now, not yet. He needed treatment first, before he could be scared off.

“I used the Force from the start, to hide it. I couldn’t let them have their victory.”

Natirru swallowed his sympathetic pain and anger for a reassuring smile. “They won’t hear a word of it, my lord. Let’s prepare everything. We’ll need to visit my ship first.”

—

He was not a brain surgeon, though he had learned the theory behind this injury anyway. It helped to cover his bases, to know at least what he was looking at, if not how to help. He watched the emergency staff droids work, his falsified patient file on their terminal’s screen. It wasn’t hard to come up with a cause - a Twi'lek man caught his lekku in machinery, and had healed his external wounds in order to return to work, but was left with damage to the part of the brain enclosed in the base, caught up with him after neglect. And only now that he was impaired was treatment sought. Nobody would double check the case of a lowly alien worker.

It _was_ the typical cause for this sort of injury, when lekku were traumatized just so and neuroplasticity or treatment did not make up for it. Natirru had inspected the appendages himself before the droids arrived, and had seen no scarring or stretch marks - this had been a single, inhumanly strong yank at an age young enough the surrounding skin would recover in natural growth. The only possible cause, knowing it was his parents… Natirru shuddered as he imagined the scene.

—

Oberon stumbled beside him as they left, getting used to moving his foot under its own biology again, but surer and surer as the medpac’s healing catalysts and the fortitude the Force-sensitive often enjoyed did their work on him. The incision from the surgery was already gone, a faint scar lost in his natural markings. There was a palpable relief from him, almost joy, though neither of them said anything until they had merged with the crowd on the way to the hangar. During the day, it was easy to be crowded in, and Natirru soon noticed an unusual berth granted to them - Oberon was subtly nudging people aside with the Force. With a range of use like that before proper apprenticeship, no wonder his parents were proud of him despite his apparent species. If only they were proud of _him_ , and not, as Natirru suspected, of themselves.

“Agent,” said Oberon. “I don’t know your name.”

“Larn'atir'ruzzhi, my lord” said Natirru with a tilt of his head to stand in for a more formal bow as they walked. “You can call me Natirru.”

“Please, just call me ‘Oberon’, Natirru. You’ve done- a great service to me.”

The stilted formality while asking for _informality_ \- he wasn’t used to this and was pretending he was. He was trying to open up, and he could barely imagine how hard that must be. Natirru reached up to put a hand on the young Sith’s shoulder. Oberon’s body jerked at the touch. For a moment, he was afraid he had recalled some awful, more violent gesture, but then he smiled back and leaned into his hand.

“I have…a lot to learn again,” he admitted, drowsiness seeping into his smile. The stimulants were wearing off already - he wondered if it had been wise to halve the dose from his supplies for his smaller body. The poor man looked like he barely ate without that armor to hide it, though - he likely stressed himself out of his own appetite, the way he must have lived. He thought again of the desire to shelter him, and knew he had to at least try to feed him while he was more relaxed.

“Will your parents take offense to excessive sleeping, Oberon?”

Oberon made a face, and seemed to wake up a little, though his tongue had loosened in exhaustion. “They’ll take offense to anything. They want me to fear and hate them. Never thought I had enough of either to be a proper Sith.” A derisive sniff. “They’ve always acted like it’s some great sacrifice they’ve made.” He pulled away, and folded his arms. The flow of people around them became more natural, and they moved to the edge of the hallway to let people pass. Then a thought seemed to occur to him, and he looked at Natirru again as if reappraising him. “Are you inviting me to stay somewhere else? If my next communication isn’t from Dromund Kaas…”

“It’s all right - I live there, too. Oberon-” he placed both hands on the younger man’s shoulders, and again opened his mind to let him feel his sincerity for himself. Oberon bowed so heavily into the touch Natirru worried he might collapse. “…You’re an adult. You’re a Sith - an apprentice a powerful Darth has chosen, waiting only for everything to be arranged.” That, his mother had made no secret of, taking every opportunity to brag. “You don’t need to spend your waiting period with them.”

“I don’t need your _pity_ ,” Oberon said, drawing back again, this time more fluidly. He seemed to abruptly remember yes, he _was_ a Sith, and had appearances to keep. Though his armor was stowed safely on board Natirru’s ship due to needing to play the part of a common worker, and he didn’t currently _look_ like one. He sighed though, suddenly drooping into exhaustion again. He had taken off the mask once and could not put it on again. “But I _would_ like to sleep uninterrupted, if it will ensure I finish healing. I’ll accept your offer.”

They resumed their walk back to Natirru’s ship. He thought about the life he’d left behind in the Republic again, and how happy he had been. How he’d been able to pursue life as a doctor in a society that welcomed his compassion, and he thought of his dear husband, and how the sting of betrayal might have affected him. He might never be able to go home again.

Oberon leaned on his shoulder as they walked, his adrenal crash beginning in earnest. Natirru scooped him up and carried him up his ship’s boarding ramp, gently setting and securing him into a chair as he fell asleep on the spot.

Home or not, he was _needed_ right here.


End file.
